Sports
Football

Argos' demise starts at the top

While head coach Scott Milanovich (left) is stuck for answers to the Argos losing nine of their past 10 and falling out of the playoff race, GM Jim Barker has made things worse with his costly trade for Drew Willy and not surrounding himself with a more experienced support staff. (Brian Blanco, photo)

Ricky Ray hasn’t played since Labour Day, a night when he got drilled by a rush end unblocked with a clear path to the backfield.

He stayed in the game as the Argos would lose to the host Ticats, even though Ray had done damage to his rib area. He had a tough time breathing and as they walked toward their locker room, head coach Scott Milanovich knew something was wrong. It would later be revealed that Ray fractured a rib and was placed on the six-game injured list.

During his absence, the Argos have gone 1-5, including five losses in succession.

Milanovich anticipates starting Drew Willy again on Friday in Calgary, but this is the week when Ray comes off the six-game period.

“I don’t think his season is done,’’ said Milanovich of Ray.

The Argos are done. Mathematics keeps them officially in the playoff hunt, but no one is expecting any miracles. For the unlikely to happen, the Argos need to beat both the 14-1-1 Stamps and the offensive juggernaut known as the Edmonton Eskimos, both on the road, and then have Hamilton lose all its three remaining games.

The Argos are committed to Willy, for reasons that defy all football logic and optics, and Ray has been cast as that veteran backup with the hope of developing a young quarterback. It was a system the franchise embraced in 2012, the first year of Milanovich’s tenure in Toronto, when veteran Jarious Jackson backed up Ray and two young guns in Zach Collaros and Trevor Harris were signed.

It sounds good in theory, but Willy isn’t anywhere close to Ray’s class and fans voiced their opinion when they booed him and the rest of the Argos during Saturday’s shellacking by Saskatchewan.

Willy did not complete a single pass in the third quarter and was benched for Dan LeFevour, the most recent quarterback to lead the Argos to a win and that was back on Sept. 11.

“You don’t want to lose your quarterback, a guy who is a Hall of Famer, but everybody in the East has had that this year at some point in time,’’ said Milanovich. “In the West, for the most part, the quarterback has stayed the same.”

In a quarterback-driven league such as the CFL, if you don’t have a competent one who oozes leadership, you have no chance. It’s part of the reason why the Argos have played liked pushovers in recent weeks, losing by a combined margin of 115-42 to Montreal, Calgary and Saskatchewan.

Milanovich insists it’s not fair to say what the Argos would be had Ray been able to stay healthy, but his absence has exposed a lack of depth and desperation.

“One guy shouldn’t make all the difference,’’ added Milanovich.

But it does, especially in football and moreso in the pass-happy CFL.

Whether it’s durability issues surrounding Ray, confidence hovering over Willy, you can’t have question marks at the quarterback position. But the problem with the Argos is that there are so many questions in all three phases. And what you’re left with is a team that has become the joke of the CFL.

Everyone in the CFL, players and executives alike, are privately mocking the Argos for acquiring Willy at such a steep price, giving up a potential all-star defensive back in T.J. Heath, a first-round pick in next year’s draft, which can turn out to be the first overall selection, and two picks in 2018, a third-rounder and fourth-rounder.

Everyone is jumping ship, some resorting to social media to express their wishes for change and, given all that has gone wrong, it’s easy to see why.

What isn’t so easy to see is how the Argos go about fixing this mess. If upper management decides to clean house by firing GM Jim Barker and Milanovich, it won’t be cheap, probably costing the organization close to $1 million in a season when the franchise is expected to lose a small fortune.

It also won’t be cheap to bring in a new football regime, with some clamouring for Marc Trestman, a quarterback guru who established a legacy of winning of Montreal with Anthony Calvillo at QB.

Barker and Milanovich created this embarrassment and they at least deserve one more season, despite the calls for change. But with some major changes and a public acknowledgment of each and every misstep, dating back to free agency when big money was spent on the likes of Josh Bourke, whose signing, much like Keon Raymond, did not pan out.

With all due respect to the people Barker has hired around him, none has what you would consider an established history in the CFL. It’s the old corporate world model, an insecure one at that: Surrounding oneself with inexperience, knowing full well the powers that be won’t fire that individual when there’s no one qualified to replace them.

When the Argos won the Grey Cup in 2012, Chris Jones and Mike O’Shea were assistants who would go on to assume head coaching roles. Orlondo Steinauer would eventually move on to Hamilton as its defensive co-ordinator, while front-office type Ted Goveia joined Winnipeg as its assistant GM, director of player personnel.

There are serious questions that need to be answered and everyone, including Barker and Milanovich, need to be accountable.

You can see why a case can be made for wholesale change, but once the emotion is taken out of the equation you can see why subtle changes can also work if the right ones and right people are hired.

EXCUSES NOT FOR MILANOVICH

Whatever you want to use to describe this football nightmare of a season for the Argonauts, they all amount to excuses.

Scott Milanovich isn’t going to resort to the what-if game and isn’t in any position to try and explain how a team that was once 4-2 has now slid to 5-11 with the real possibility of sliding even further.

“I can’t answer that without making a bunch of excuses for the way we’re playing,’’ said the head coach. “You want to sit here and rationalize as a coach when you play poorly, but the only thing I can give you are excuses and I’m not going to do that.”

All three phases have looked woeful, each one exposed at some point. There are no fingers being pointed because there aren’t enough fingers to point to all the deficiencies on this team.

In Toronto’s past two games, both at home, the Argos trailed at the half 35-6 to Calgary and then fell behind at intermission 20-0 to Saskatchewan.